Lady Nij (Nij dono) is the protagonist of the autobiographical narrative Towazugatari (An Unasked-for Tale, 1307-1313), which describes her life from the ages of fourteen to forty-nine. Through skillfully combining elements of genres such as the classical court diary (nikki), tale (monogatari), and travel diary (kik), Towazugatari paints an intimate picture of life at the court of Retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa, where Lady Nij served as imperial concubine, and presents colorful vignettes of Kamakura and other areas traversed by Nij after she became a Buddhist nun. Towazugatari served as an important source for the fourteenth-century historical narrative Masukagami (The Larger Mirror, 1368-1375) and then largely disappeared from sight until a single manuscript was unearthed in 1938. Since the first annotated editions appeared in the 1960s, Towazugatari has been enthusiastically received by scholars and has inspired artists, including the Japanese novelist Setouchi Harumi and the English playwright Caryl Churchill, to re-create Lady Nij in their own works. It is now regularly included in major publishers' sets of classical works.
Lady Nij identified her father as Nakano'in (or Koga) Masatada, whose father, Michimitsu, was a chancellor (daj daijin) credited with fourteen poems in the eighth imperial anthology, Shin kokinshu (New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times, 1205). Masatada died while still a major counselor (dainagon), and only three of his poems appear in imperial anthologies. In 1303 a new imperial anthology appeared without a poem by Masatada, an oversight about which Lady Nij expresses her discontent in Towazugatari. Reviving the family's waning artistic reputation, in fact, appears to be one of the motives behind the creation of the work. Lady Nij's mother, Chikako (also read Kinshi), the daughter of Minister of War Shij Takachika, died in 1259, the year after Nij's birth. Chikako served in the naishi no tsukasa (palace attendant's office) and is mentioned in official records and in Ben no naishi nikki (1246-1252). In Towazugatari Go-Fukakusa refers to her by the nickname Sukedai and claims that she was the woman appointed to initiate him into the pleasures of sex.
Were it not for Towazugatari, the daughter of this highly placed pair would have been forgotten, like most women of her time. She remains nameless: nij (second ward) is a designation given to high-ranking court ladies. Although most of the other characters and many of the events of Towazugatari are mentioned in contemporary records, there is only a single external reference to Lady Nij herself. According to Towazugatari, Nij went to live at Go-Fukakusa's court in 1261 when she was four, and ten years later Go-Fukakusa made her his concubine. The following year (1272) she became pregnant, just before her father died. The son she bore Go-Fukakusa died in infancy, leaving the seventeen-year-old Nij with no parental support and no imperial offspring to enhance her position at court, where she faced the enmity of the former empress, Higashi Nij'in. In 1283 she was dismissed. She returned to court life only briefly in 1285 for the ninetieth birthday celebration of the honorary empress, Lady Kitayama.
The political situation during Nij's years at court was complex: de facto power lay with the shogunate in Kamakura, and the decline of imperial influence was furthered by a conflict between Go-Fukakusa and his younger brother, Kameyama. Sexual politics was a significant part of the competition for power, and Lady Nij was both a player and a pawn in that game. In Towazugatari she comments caustically on the other women she leads to Go-Fukakusa's bed, and she sleeps with Go-Fukakusa's estranged brother, Kameyama, and the powerful regent (sessh) Takatsukasa Kanehira. In addition she has two long affairs, one with Saionji Sanekane, the influential liaison between Kyoto and Kamakura, and the other with a high priest from Ninnaji, possibly a half brother of Go-Fukakusa, who encourages both these relationships. In Towazugatari she claims to have borne her lovers three children, two of whom were surrendered to Sanekane and Go-Fukakusa; the fates of these children are unknown.
One of the prominent techniques in Towazugatari is Lady Nij's use of allusion to compare her situations and characters to those from prior literary works, especially the Heian court classics. Go-Fukakusa and Nij's early relationship, for example, is modeled on that of Genji and Murasaki in Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), and Sanekane's first visit to Nij is cast in terms of an episode fromIse monogatari (Tales of Ise). Such allusions are neither simple nor stable: Lady Nij is compared to most of the female characters in Genji monogatari and most often to Genji himself.
The single external reference to Lady Nij occurs in a Masukagami entry for 1288, a year not covered in the extant Towazugatari. In the bridal procession for Saionji Sanekane's daughter (the future empress Eifukumon'in) is "a daughter of the Koga major counselor Mastada, who was upset because she had been given the designation Sanjo" (third ward, a rank lower than second ward, or nij).
When Towazugatari resumes early in 1289, Nij is a nun on her way to Kamakura, where she interacts with the highest levels of local society and gives advice on arrangements for the arrival of the new shogun, Go-Fukakusa's son Hisaakira. She spends eight months in eastern Japan; then, after a brief and uncomfortable sojourn in Kyoto, she goes to Nara. In 1291 at Iwashimizu shrine she accidentally encounters Go-Fukakusa, who has also entered Buddhist orders, and then she visits the Atsuta and Ise shrines. The following year she meets Go-Fukakusa for the last time at his Fushimi Palace.
In 1302 and 1303, described in the fifth and last section of Towazugatari, Nij travels around western Japan, where a local landlord attempts to force her to remain in his domain because of her artistic talents. After she has returned to the Kyoto area in 1304, Nij learns of Higashi Nij'in's death and the illness of Go-Fukakusa. With Sanekane's aid she glimpses Go-Fukakusa on his deathbed and later, grief stricken, follows behind his funeral procession. During the last two years recorded in Towazugatari Nij sells keepsakes from her parents in order to pay for copying and offering Buddhist sutras to various shrines. She also marks anniversaries of her father's and Go-Fukakusa's deaths, contacts friends in the capital (including Empress Yugi, Go-Fukakusa's daughter), and intensifies her dedication to poetry.
In her travels to the East, Nij looks for traces of the literary past and rarely finds them unchanged. The changes in the landscape often reflect changes in her life: while a goose from Miyoshino is used as a metaphor for the nubile, fourteen-year-old Nij, the thirty-two-year-old nun learns that because Miyoshino (good plains) proved to be barren its name was changed to Yoshida (good fields). Nij claims that her travels are motivated by the life of the poet-priest Saigy, though her journeys overlap considerably with those of the fourteenth-century priest Ippen and popular Buddhist tales (setsuwa) are inserted into the narrative, giving the text a slightly medieval cast.
After the narrative of Towazugatari ends, nothing is known about the life and death of Lady Nij or the fate of her children.
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